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| THE WORD HOUND by Jan Haber |
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All that jazz I heard that the word jazz was once considered obscene-never said in polite company. Can this be true? -PBT, Grand View A big yes to that! Here's a quote from a 1985 issue of U.S. News & World Report- "Disputes over entertainment are as old as the country. America's forefathers grumbled about bawdy ballads popular in 16th century English pubs before they packed up to head to the New World. Fans of improvised music in New Orleans shocked the Establishment in the early years of the [20th] century by naming it 'jazz'-Creole patois for sexual intercourse. 'Rock and roll,' itself a blues music term for sex, suggested rebellion and abandon as much as it did a new style of music when it first jarred adult sensibilities in the 1950s. 'When you're growing up,' says Jerry Kramer, a prominent director of music videos, 'you like rock and roll for one reason: because your parents don't.'" In the conventional American mind jazz, like blues and boogie-woogie, was associated with sleazy bars, honkytonks and bordellos. Though African-American musicians are credited with inventing jazz, the abhorrence of it was not a question of racism; many people of color were equally disapproving of the "devil's music-the opiate that inflames the mind and incites to riotous orgies of delirious syncopation." The word jazz
first appeared in American English in 1909, in the lyrics to
the song, Uncle Josh in Society-"one lady asked me if Authorities think the word originated in Africa. In 1860 the word jasm was recorded in the Congo. In connection with dancing it meant energy or drive. Similar words are jasi, of Mandingo origin meaning to become unlike oneself, and the Temne word yas, meaning to be extremely lively or energetic. Jazz as a verb meaning to speed or liven up (jazz it up) entered the language 1917; all that jazz meaning et cetera was first recorded in 1939; in 1977 Jazzercise was a proprietary name for exercise done to jazz music. Jazz Age appeared in 1922 in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels, defined as the years between the end of World War I (1918) and the Stock Market crash of 1929. The Word Hound
welcomes readers' questions |
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